 You are clear for launch. And with that, shut down your visors, O2 on, and prepare for ignition to O2. You can copy that and um... Hey, it's Mr. Ruschoff again. Alright, and I'm glad you're here. Alright, so on our last lesson, we were looking at the physical geography of Russia and the former Soviet Republics. In this lesson, we're going to look at the history of the region that has helped shape the people today. Now, right off we get to talk about the movement theme of geography as we explore how humans settle the region. It is largely believed that the human species originated in Africa and then moved out of Africa to spread to the rest of the world. This brought them through the Middle East and from there, some moved into the Caucasus and then into Central Asia. For example, in Western Kazakhstan, the remains of what anthropologists called the Ust-Ishman were discovered and his bone actually goes back to 45,000 years ago. It is believed that mankind has been in the region ever since. Now, for the next 40,000 years, humans would continue to migrate across Eurasia, including those who would go across the Bering Strait into what is today the Americas. The region around Transcaucasia and what is now Eastern Russia would become home to a series of nomadic Slavic tribes who would later be influenced by the ancient Greeks and other Germanic tribes such as the Goths. But it would be the Vikings that would set into motion the events that created the Russia of today and its former republics. In the 9th century, the Scandinavians moved down from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black and Caspian seas by boat and took control of these Slavic tribes, establishing their capital where Kyiv Ukraine is today. The name of their empire would come from the Nordic word Rus, which means the men that row, and the Kyiv and Rus Empire was born. By the way, it is the Kyiv and Rus, Rus where we get the name Russia today. Now, the Kyiv and Rus belt wealth as Kyiv's relocation in Ukraine allowed the empire to control the trade between Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire for various different goods, including furs and slaves. This connection with the Byzantine Empire not only brought wealth, but it also introduced several cultural aspects to the region. For example, when Saint Sarel, a Byzantine missionary, began to translate Christian texts into the Slavic languages of the Kyiv and Rus, he used his own Greek alphabet and then added 19 additional letters for sound specific to the Slavic languages. The result is this Cyrillic alphabet named after him, which is used by many of the region's languages to include Russian, Ukrainian, and most of the primary languages of Central Asia such as Khazeluzbek, Turkmen, and many of the others. It wasn't only the alphabet that Russia and its republics got from the Byzantines, it was also In 987 AD, Vladimir the Great sent emissaries to the three great religions of the time. This was Islam, Judaism, and Christianity in order to pick the religion that would be best for the empire. Vladimir automatically dismissed Islam because of his prohibition on drinking alcohol, remarking that drinking was the joy of all the Rus. Judaism was discounted due to their believers being expelled from Jerusalem. Vladimir believed that this was a sign of God's displeasure with the Jews, so didn't want to pick Judaism as the religion, this left Orthodox Christianity of the Byzantines to become the religion of the land. The precursor Lavra in Kiev, also known as the monastery of the caves, was founded in 1051 soon after the Orthodox Jews became the religion of the land, and the Lavra has been an important site of Eastern Orthodox religion ever since. Now unfortunately for the Kievan Rus, in 1223 the Golden Horde of the Moguls swept across and captured the empire. The 240 years of Mogul control caused several changes within the land. The Mogul influences are seen in the Russian languages, in art, and even in the church. The Orthodox church, which was largely left alone by the Mongols, actually grew in power among the people and ultimately became a source of resistance to the Mongols. Some historians point to more troubling influences, however. The Mongols constricted hundreds of thousands of slaves and concubines into the Mongol army. The tributes, this is money that was demanded by the Mongols prevented the region from really developing any wealth, skilled labor such as artists, masons, carpenters, were moved from Russia's cities to Mongol areas, depriving the cities of their expertise. And additionally, the Mongol influence in Russia left most European states to cut ties off from Russia. This isolation of Russia from the rest of Europe has been cited by many historians to have lessened the impact of the renaissance of the art and sciences within Russia. Moreover, with the fall of the Kievan Rus, the importance of the city of Kiev declined and the city of Moscow grew in importance. Interestingly, is also the Mongols trade routes that others have pointed as the reason why the Bulbatic plague came from Asia to their Crimean Peninsula. From there, it spread into the rest of the Europe as the Black Duff. Now, the 240 year rule of the Mongols ended with Ivan the Great, who would defeat the Mongols in 1480. At this point, the Russian Empire came back to power. And with this capital in Moscow, it would begin to spread through the sparsely populated areas to the east and to the south. By the 1700s, all of today's Russia was under the Empire's control. Other areas such as Ukraine would have become under the Empire before the end of the 18th century. And Transcaucasia felt that the Russians by the mid 1800s, as would most of today's Kazakhstan. It would be the Southern Central Republics upon which the great game between Britain and Russia would be played. Previously, the Southern Central Republics such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan were the pathway of the Silk Road. The Silk Road was the network of trade routes stretching over 4,000 miles from China to the Constantinople. And it went right through Central Asia. Cities such as Bakaras, Marklin and Tashkent were major trading hubs of the Silk Road. The Central Republics became the crossroads of the world as merchants moved in, through, and out to do trade. This is also the reason why there are so many ethnicities in Central Asia. These are the descendants of the merchants who would come around the world and ultimately would settle there. But in the 1800s, Central Asia was another type of crossroads, one that the British felt would bring the Russians down into British India. Between 1813 and 1907, Britain and Russia was in an economic and military competition to win over the people of Central Asia, their great game. Russia was playing this great game to secure territory in Central Asia, and the British were planning to keep the Russians from interfering into their lands and territories of British India. The game concluded in 1907, when the Russians allowed the British to draw the borders of Afghanistan and create Afghanistan as a buffer between Russian control Central Asia and British India. By this time, Russia occupied a vast empire. However, the Russians realized that the very size of their empire would be difficult control. This is in effect of distance decay. We've talked about distance decay before. This is the idea that when you have larger distances, you have less influence or control between two different peoples. Now one of the policies that Russia and then later the Soviet Union used in order to have control was Russification. Russification was the policy in which the Russians imposed the Russian culture upon the peoples of Transcaucasia in Central Asia. The idea is that if these peoples adopted the Russian language, Russian Orthodox Christianity, and the Russian government policies, then the people will have no reason to want to separate from Russia. Another way that the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin attempted to keep control was through forced population resettlements such as what happened to the Kulaks. Since the Soviet Union was a communist country, it was decreed that all property should belong to the state in the process of bringing that property into the state as known as nationalization or collectivization. This put the Soviet government in a collision course with the Kulaks. The Kulaks were relatively wealthy farmers who owned large farms. In 1930, Stalin ordered the Kulaks to be categorized into three different categories. The first category was those who would be evicted from their farms and forced to work in labor colonies. The second category would be those who would be imprisoned or just shot. And the third category were those who would be sent to Siberia, the northern Urals, or Kazakhstan after having their farms seized by the state. The result was nearly two million Kulaks who were moved on top of the 600,000 people who died during the period. One Soviet historian estimates that the number who died may have been as many as five million people. Stalin also used resettlement during World War II. Fearing that the Chechens and the Inguz populations, these are the people who live on the Russian side of the Caucasus Mountains, they fear that they would side with Nazi Germany. Therefore, Stalin called for Operation Lentil. Between February and March 1944, between 500 to 600,000 Inguz and Chechens were deported to Central Asia. Another 200 to 400,000 may have died due to starvation during this period. That is because another tool of control used by Stalin was controlling food. The Ukrainians felt the brunt of this during the Holodomor between 1932 and 1933. In 1932, the Soviet Union imposed high quotas on how much food the farms now under government control would have to give to the state. However, the quotas imposed were far higher than what the farmers could supply, leaving very little to survive on or even to use a seed to plant for the next year. The result was that while the Soviets were selling the food raised by the Ukrainian food sold for export for money, at least 3 million people starved to death. Many historians suggested the reason for the Soviet indifference of the Ukrainian people was that Ukraine had been an independent country between 1917 and 1922 and Stalin was using food as a weapon to crush European independence movements. Now, not all the genocides in the region were committed by the Russians or the Soviets, however. After the 1915 World War I battle with sarcasm between the Russian and Ottoman empires, the Ottomans believed the Armenians that lived in what is Turkey today had conspired with Russia to win the battle. In retribution, the Ottomans killed nearly one million Armenians who were living on West today, Turkey. Today, Turkey argues that this was not a crime but a necessary operation of war. However, over 100 years later in 2019, the United States Congress and Senate voted to recognize this act as a genocide. Now, to get back to the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union, along with its republics and trans-colonial occasions, Central Asia, would continue on until the communist economy began to crash down and finally in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, each other's republics would find their own independence and our independent countries today. In our next lesson, we'll look at how this history has set up the conditions of the people in Russia, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia today. But until then, keep on learning.